[REQ] Mod request: Jettison debris in place of decoys
 

[REQ] Mod request: Jettison debris in place of decoys

I'm not terribly disturbed about the inclusion of Pillenwaffers in US subs in SH4, but I don't care for it, either. It does not affect gameplay at all as long as I ignore it, and those are the kind of things I can live with. But it got me to thinking how cool it would be to mod this to resemble SH1 and the tactics seen in old sub movies where the skipper, under heavy attack, would order the crew to jettison debris (and sometimes a dead crewman, see Rub Silent, Run Deep). The Japanese would see the floating stuff and sometimes think the sub was destroyed and leave. In place of bubbling decoys, have some general purpose stuff; mattress, shirt, cork, oil, small food boxes, etc. And if the buoyancy characteristics can be made for the debris to float, even better. Use would need to be limited to once a day (24 hours) or so. The tricky part, would be to mod the effect the debris would have on enemy AI. Decoys as they exist in the game obviously have an effect on enemy AI; does it make them depth charge in the wrong area? Or does it make them give up and go away? If the latter, perfect. If the former, well, I can live with that as a substitute.

If this sounds dumb, ok, just ignore me, lol. If anyone wants to tackle this, let me know how I can help. I will get into stuff like this after the review is finished and I have more time to play SH4 for fun.

Cheers
Neal

cool idea!

Some of the AI might drop right on top of the debris (sub must be below it) gives away your position - so be careful :huh:

that would rock!

Yes - an excellent idea. Wasn't there an oil slicks mod for SH II or something? That would be very cool, especially with some of that flotsam that pops up after a ship sinks too. It woud have a chance of getting the DDs to think you're hasta la vista and leave you alone.

Mylander

Neal, I never knew you watched porn.

Or is that a video on legitimate massage techniques?:rotfl:

I'm actually working on a mod for sh3 to simulate the water disturbance produced by deep charges (blinding the sensors for several minutes), I'm using a modified decoy, they fool the AI into thinking that the decoy is a sub, the tricky part is to disctract them enough to simulate the contact lost but not enough to make them drop charges on top of their own, resuming, the decoys can be tweaked to atract the AI but not enough to drop charges, and the bubbles they emit can be replaced by other objects, including debris and oil spots, so it's perfectly doable, the problem is to limit they use once a day, what can be done is like with any other weapon in the sim to have a finite amount aboard per patrol.

Ref

Good show, ref. Yes, twice per patrol would be plenty.

And yeah, we want the debris to have an inverse attraction effect... go away, DD, go away.... but if possible, only 50% succesful...

Kool idea :up: I brought this up in SH-3 ."Debris Mod" please look in my post files . I was told in so many words to go **** in my hat.

But was it used in combat?

Norman Friedman's US Submarines through 1945 has some info on them - it was a much more complex affair than a simple "decoy" as portrayed in our game.

Check pages 247-248 in the book.

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7564/danforumuy7.gif

Are there any reports of this happening in real life? Unless the stuff had a lot of air in it I'd imagine most of it would sink rather than float, although I'm just basing that on having seen a documentary on TV saying that if a person got in deep water it was hard to rise to the surface.

If it can be proven decoys were not used during the war, how hard would it be to remove the icon from the menu screen and remove the item from the list of the sub's components?

Yes , good idea.
remove the launch icon or make a loooooonng reload time, perhaps days.

i doubt that this tactic could be used in real life :hmm:

If I remember correctly a victim of drowning WILL not float until the decaying process releases enough gases into the body cavity to float it. This is the case in FRESH water. As we are dealing with salt water and the fact that things a more bouyant I still think that debris such as matresses, pillows (feathered back then) and such would have to injected with air to float them and a "Mae West" placed on a body. You will also have to take into account the amount of travel time the surface from a certain depth. I'm not trying to squash the idea. I love it. I just think that if this MOD comes about then whoever does it needs to consider alot of other factors into the equation. For realism's sake....CH

I think its feasible. I worked out how to change the S boats start with a 4 inch gun, and replaced it with a 3 incher to begin with. So I assume you can do with with any component of the boat. It may be worth adding the decoy layer as a very late war upgrade.